merger

Banks aren’t the only things merging right and left. The economy is forcing companies from all sectors to merge to stay viable.

Take Koei and Tecmo for example. Staying afloat when you have one viable franchise is hard enough in a good economy, but take away your customers’ disposable income (and the one viable franchise since Itagaki left) and things get difficult.

Of course now they’re actually going to have to make some games. Tecmo already brought back Tecmo Bowl so here’s hoping they delve into Koei properties. It’s been far too long since the last installment of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and a next-gen sequel to Aerobiz Supersonic is long overdue. The Aerobiz series doesn’t get enough respect and Supersonic is one of my all-time favorites.

Oh it’s the video game breakup of the century. Instead of these two goliaths hooking up and making whoopee, Electronic Arts has decided to call off its proposed union with Take-Two Interactive. What does this mean for both companies? Oh well, Wall Street is deciding to punish them both by torpedoing their stocks.

Take-Two has fallen 22.02 percent to $17.07 and EA has dipped to $44.42 a drop of 1.27 percent as of 10:33 PDT. We’ll update the finally stock price at the closing bell, which will be in the middle of the day.

Frankly, I don’t think this is a huge deal in the bigger perspective. From what I hear, pretty much every market is tanking right now. It’s going to be a very merry holiday season.

UPDATE: The market has been closed for the past two hours. Here’s how it turned out. Electronic Arts fell to $43.30, a loss of 3.76 percent. Meanwhile, Take-Two continued to fall and hit $16.57, drop of 24.30 percent. Not good news for either side.

I mentioned this a couple of days ago, but the weird kabuki dance between Electronic Arts and Take Two. Take Two let EA’s unsolicited offer expire on Monday, and the two companies signed a deal to explore “strategic alternatives.”

Well, now Reuters is reporting that it has no problems with a possible EA deal with Take Two. An interesting tidbit behind this courting process is that EA CEO John Riccitiello, and Take-Two Executive Chairman Strauss Zelnick over the weekend, according to EA.

We all know that Electronic Arts has been eyeing Take Two for a while now. The company that publishes the 2K Sports games and the Grand Theft Auto franchise has key properties that EA would love to snatch up.

Well, after the Redwood City company’s initial offer was rejected. I thought it would be settled: no sale. But apparently, it’s not so simple. Although EA’s offer expired on Monday, the L.A. Times says the deal isn’t dead yet. We kind of got that impression from this press release on Monday.

The two companies are trying to work together to seek strategic alternatives now that EA’s initial offer is officially dead. I suppose this could either be a prelude to a megadeal or something else. We’ll have to wait on Thursday at the earliest for the story to move forward. That’s when the Federal Trade Commission will conclude its antitrust investigation of a potential deal.